(Yicai Global) Oct. 31 -- Big Four auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) released its 2017 Global Innovation 1000 study on the largest corporate research and development spenders. China's three internet giants made the top 100.

E-commerce titan Amazon.com Inc. [NASDAQ:AMZN], Google parent Alphabet Inc. [NASDAQ:GOOG] and computer chip behemoth Intel Corp. [NASDAQ:INTC] ranked first, second and third.

Electronics manufacturers Samsung Electronics Co. [KRX:005930] and Apple Inc. [NASDAQ:AAPL] came in fourth and ninth, and Microsoft Corp. [NASDAQ:MSFT] was sixth.

Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. [NYSE:BABA] ranked 56th, the highest among the Chinese firms, with USD2.5 billion of R&D expenditure. Tencent Holdings Ltd. [HK:0700] spent USD1.7 billion on R&D and was 81st. Baidu Inc. [NASDAQ:BIDU] took 99th with USD1.5 billion of R&D spending.

E-commerce firm JD.com Inc. [NASDAQ:JD], which is set to become China's fourth internet giant, ranked 187th with USD800 million of R&D spending.